In a scene from her new book, Lab Dog, Melanie Kaplan makes herself watch a video taken by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) during its undercover investigation at Envigo, then a beagle-breeding operation in Virginia. She sees a blurry image of “a woman in blue scrubs sticking a syringe into a beagle puppy’s head as the puppy screams and screams and seems to never stop screaming.”
At Kaplan’s feet as she watches this on her laptop is her own beagle, Hammy, who was born at the facility before it became Envigo and was then used for research at Virginia Tech. Upon hearing the puppy’s screams of pain, Hammy perks up his ears and stands uneasily at attention. Kaplan turns off the sound, unable to bear it, then looks instead at some still photos that PETA released. One shows a beagle standing “behind a pile of poop, tail down, head slightly lowered, dark eyes focused on the person behind the camera.” The dog, she notices, “looked a lot like Hammy.” She snaps shut her laptop and tries to erase the image, and the screams, from her mind.
While Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research thankfully does not have many such depictions, the pain and deprivation inflicted on the tens of thousands of dogs that to this day are being used for research is never out of mind. The book, which the late Jane Goodall pronounced “heartbreaking and hopeful,” is a deep dive into a world most Americans know nothing about, often by choice, as they shower love on their own canine companions.
Hammy, short for Hamilton, came into Kaplan’s life in July 2013, when he was three years and ten months old. He was among a group of dogs released through the Beagle Freedom Project, which finds homes for beagles who were once used in laboratories.
Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research
By Melanie D.G. Kaplan
Seal Press, 352 pages
Publication date: October 14, 2025
Kaplan tells in the book of the years she spent traveling around the country, often accompanied by Hammy, to learn what she could about the use of dogs in scientific research, and in particular about Hammy’s past. Clearly, it was traumatic. He did not bark at all for his first several weeks in Kaplan’s home, and even after several years was spooked by sudden sounds. He whimpered as he slept, which she interpreted as nightmares.
But in time, Hammy joined the ranks of other dogs seen by their owners as the most wonderful creatures on Earth and cherished beyond measure. Hammy and Kaplan, together with her pseudonymous boyfriend, Peanut Butter Man, formed what they called a “Hamily.” She tells of a moment, toward the end of Hammy’s life, when he extended his paw until it reached her face and she “inhaled the popcorn smell of his warm footpads.” She whispers to him: “We found each other in this big world. I love you so much.”
If there is hope for other dogs who endure miserable caged existences in breeding facilities and research labs, it resides in the fact that every dog person, upon hearing this story, can relate.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees research involving animals, an average of nearly 50,000 dogs per year were used in U.S. laboratories between 2021 and 2023. While this is down substantially from the hundreds of thousands of dogs in decades past, it is still a sizable number. Dogs, mostly “purpose-bred” beagles from commercial facilities, continue to be used for everything from drug trials to cancer research to training students in surgical procedures, despite the availability of nin-animal alternatives.
Before passage of the Animal Welfare Act in 1966, many dogs used in research were strays or even stolen from people’s homes; even afterward, dogs were often fraudulently obtained and flagrantly misused. Witnesses who testified before Congress in 1996 to amend the Animal Welfare Act, Kaplan relates, provided “examples of dealers who used hubcaps for serving kibble, chained dogs to the bumper of an old pickup, and euthanized them by gassing them in a box with exhaust from a truck.” There were also documented cases of puppies being tossed alive into garbage cans, dogs cannibalizing their cagemates, and procedures like castration being performed without anesthetic.
Envigo, the dog-breeding facility in Cumberland, Virginia, where Hammy was born, was shuttered in 2022 by federal authorities after years of documented violations and reports of mistreatment. This included failure to provide adequate veterinary care, food, water, and sanitation, and instances in which live dogs were thrown into bins with dead ones after botched euthanasia procedures. The company was forced to surrender all of its 4,000-plus dogs for adoption and ultimately agreed to pay a $35 million fine—the largest ever for an animal welfare enforcement action.
But tens of thousands of beagles are still being bred for use in sometimes painful and often deadly experiments. The nation’s largest beagle production facility is Marshall BioResources in North Rose, New York. When Kaplan and Hammy scoped out the facility in 2021, it had more than 20,000 beagles. No one from Marshall agreed to talk to Kaplan, but the company later put out a statement saying it provides “humane, ethical care for our animals” and is in compliance “with all laws and regulations.”
With the closure of Envigo, the nation’s second largest provider of beagles for research is now Ridglan Farms in the village of Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, about thirty miles from my home in Madison. Ridglan Farms has been in business since 1966, the year the Animal Welfare Act was passed. In recent years it has housed about 3,200 dogs. The latest federal inspection, conducted in late September, put the count at just under 2,400.
As I have reported in a series of articles for Isthmus, Madison’s alternative paper, Ridglan Farms has long been the subject of community concern. In April 2017, three animal rights activists broke into the facility overnight, leaving with three beagles and video footage of rows upon rows of obviously distressed dogs barking and running in circles in their tiny cages stacked two deep.
This led to the filing of criminal charges—not against the facility, but against the three activists, who each faced a potential maximum sentence of sixteen years in prison and $35,000 in fines. But just days before a scheduled trial, Ridglan asked that the charges be dismissed, claiming the business was receiving death threats.
Incredibly, the activists opposed the dismissal of the charges against them, saying Ridglan was just trying to prevent testimony about its operation from coming out in court. When this was not successful, they focused on seeking criminal charges against Ridglan for violations of the state’s animal cruelty laws, buttressed by testimony from former employees and years of state inspection reports. Former employees at Ridglan came forward with stories about dogs having painful surgeries performed on their eyes without anesthesia. They also said it was once common practice to cut some dogs’ vocal cords to keep them from barking, without proper pain medication.
Direct Action Everywhere
This was among the photos taken by animal rights activists who entered Ridglan Farms overnight in April 2017.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne has consistently refused to act against Ridglan. But after hearing a day of testimony from the former employees and others, county Judge Rhonda Lanford effectively bypassed Ozanne by appointing a special prosecutor to look into whether criminal charges are warranted.
That probe, by a district attorney from another county, is still underway. But in late September, the state’s Veterinarian Licensing Board suspended the license of Ridglan’s head veterinarian, Richard Van Domelen. It found that he had, among other things, allowed staff without the required licenses to perform surgical procedures, usually without anesthesia or pain mitigation. It also found that he had largely failed to take corrective action, as he was earlier ordered to do.
Rebekah Robinson, who filed the original complaint against Van Domelen on behalf of her group Dane4Dogs, lauded his suspension as “a long-overdue acknowledgment of the suffering endured by dogs at Ridglan Farms.” She urged regulators to “continue taking strong enforcement actions until the cruelty at Ridglan is stopped for good.”
A recently obtained document shows the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection, which includes the licensing board, has identified 311 violations by Ridglan Farms since 2022, most alleging mistreatment of dogs. DATCP proposed a civil forfeiture of $55,148.50. Ridglan rejected the deal, so the agency is referring the matter to the district attorney’s office.
On September 29, the day before Van Domelen’s suspension, a public relations firm hired by Ridglan Farms put out a news release crowing about the fact that a recent USDA inspection, like most of those that have come before, determined that the facility was in full compliance with the Animal Welfare Act.
“All of the animal care staff at Ridglan Farms are highly dedicated individuals who care deeply about animals and regularly witness how our work directly translates into improved health for our family pets,” Van Domelen said in the press release. “Last week’s inspection is just the latest proof of this tremendous commitment.”
Robinson sees it differently, citing articles that flag the USDA for its notoriously weak enforcement. It’s to the point, she tells me in an email, where most people in the animal rescue community see breeders who tout their USDA credentials as “a red flag.”
In Lab Dog, Kaplan talks to supporters of animal research, although most actual researchers avoid speaking to her. She also talks to Mihael Polymeropoulos, the cofounder of a pharmaceutical company, who says: “Lethal dog experiments are morally unacceptable, period. They’re sentient animals.” The fact that researchers may learn something that could benefit humans, he believes, does not justify it.
Seal Press
There are signs that momentum is building against animal research and toward the idea that research animals should be able to spend at least part of their lives in loving homes. Beginning with Minnesota in 2014, some states have passed laws requiring that dogs who survive taxpayer-funded research projects must be put up for adoption rather than be euthanized, although these laws often lack reporting requirements needed to ensure compliance.
As The Progressive reported in June, a number of federal agencies, buoyed by prominent rightwingers, have pledged to phase out research involving cats and dogs. Meanwhile, groups like the Beagle Freedom Project stand willing and able to find new homes for dogs used in research.
Despite his health being compromised by colon cancer in his final years, Hammy lived to age fourteen. Kaplan writes movingly of their final adventures, and his peaceful death. Hold on to your hanky.
Toward the end of her book, Kaplan takes a stab at identifying who is responsible for the fact that research on dogs and other animals in research is still going on. It is, well, all of us. As she writes:
“We pay tuition to universities experimenting on animals. We elect officials who support funding animal research over alternatives. We pay taxes that support biomedical research on living beings. We buy pesticides and cleaners and drugs without thinking about the animals they were tested on . . . . We humans are the ones who breed and confine and experiment on dogs.”
And we are the ones who can make it stop.